Keep Him My Country

by Mary Durack

When 19-year-old Stan Rolt strikes out for the Northern Territory, determined to manage an ailing family cattle station, he plays into the hands of his manipulative grandfather. Intending to spend two years at Trafalgar Station, he stays fifteen, his soul captured by the harsh but haunting country of Kimberley. Try as he might, he can't seem to escape its clutches, even though it killed his father and threatens also to bring him down. He is held there by the dependence of the people, black and white, and the memory of a tragic love affair that still haunts him...

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Dame Mary Durack was an Australian author and historian. The Durack family were pioneers in the settlement of Australia by Europeans. The story of her family's history, beginning with the mid-19th century migration from Ireland, is presented by Durack in Kings in Grass Castles, and its sequel, Sons in the Saddle.

Durack married the aviator, Captain Horrie C. Miller, and had two sons and four daughters. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1977 for her services to literature.

Reviews

[Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story of the early settlements, reluctant pioneers and beautiful rich, rolling, fertile lands. A story of how the real foundations of Australia were made in a settler’s agricultural life and the early difficulties they faced. Life was strenuous and hard. They were the days when much was endured, when literally your bread was earned by the sweat of the brow and much fortitude. What was endured had to be experienced to be realised. These worthy people deserve to be seen, not through the haze of myth but accepting of the idea of Australia as being what it really was.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will surely entice you to vote YES in the upcoming referendum in Australia!

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! An extraordinary book. Revealing - the complex relationships between white settlers and aboriginal peoples in the period immediately after WW2. Purporting to be a human love story, it’s also the story of love for Country.
So well written - Durack has the aboriginal pidgin voices as well expressed as the early 20th century whites’.
This is an important book.....this is part of the real history of remote Australia.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keep Him My Country is a book that must be read within its historical context. Published in 1955, it tells the story of Stan Rolt, manager of the Trafalgar station in the Northern Territory for years, who for many of those years plans to leave but can never quite manage to do so. He is held to the place by his connection with the country and with the people there, both indigenous and non-indigenous. He has had an affair with an Aboriginal woman, many years before the story opens, and now he manages the motley crew of characters on the station with some humour, a firm hand, and an open mind. Mary Durack, born into a pioneering family, writes of what she knows - the rough characters, the unforgiving landscape, the relations between indigenous and non-indigenous characters. With an explanatory note in the front cover, the book uses terms "now acknowledged as derogatory to Aboriginal people", and indeed some of the ways Aboriginal people are described may also be considered disempowering. Yet I found the book valuable - it opened up a world to me that I have known little about, giving me a first-hand description of the positioning of men and women, Aboriginal and white, on the land in the middle of the twentieth century. The story is, of course, told by a white woman; indigenous people are seen through white eyes, and although there is a significant amount of respect and understanding that comes through, there are also characterisations that would be decried today. Yet the book is an important historical record; the central character comes across as sensible and quite likeable, and I was grateful to be reminded of the challenges and hardships of life a couple of generations before mine, and the ingenuity and general cheerfulness with which people made-do and made the best of their lot in life.

[Ann Tonks · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story feels deeply authentic including all the tragic aspects of the relationships between indigenous people and the invaders who took their land. It's a heartfelt story and the descriptions of the land and the relationships are stunning. Even though it's more than 60 years since it was written, it still can teach Australians about their history and their (shared) country.

[Sammy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has caused me to have a reading slump.

As I read through the first few pages, I started to think that I’d enjoy the exploits of Stan Rolt on his outback cattle station, I’ve heard stories from my father about him being a worker on one, so I was interested to see what would happen. But then the story's attention started to drift away from Stan, telling us the entire history of the Rolt family in excruciating detail. I felt overwhelmed by all this dialogue, and when finishing the book, I realised that it all wasn’t necessary. Rolt’s family hardly ever come up much throughout the story, except for when his uncle (?) flies down to the cattle station to tell him that his grandfather has died and hasn’t left Stan the station he has spent managing for most of his life. Other than that, there are a few mentions of his father being dead, his auntie writing him letters, and him possibly having a half-caste sibling (maybe I am remembering wrong), but ultimately the only people that have any effect on the story are his dead grandfather and uncle. Why spend pages and pages talking about things that don’t benefit the reader? At least slowly build up the information over time, revealing to us Stan's relationship and qualms with them.

Other than that, I often found myself blanking out when reading. Much of it was just…not compelling to me I suppose. Then we finally get a somewhat interesting event happening of Stan’s grandfather dying and not giving him Trafalger. Stan wants to get a lawyer and talks to his uncle about him getting more out of his grandfather's will, but that plot is never resolved. It just ends with a very rushed conclusion of Stan’s old lover dying from illness, someone who has only been brought up twice. Once when we had a flashback chapter and an out-of-place chapter where a group of Aboriginee’s kill her boyfriend.

Stan himself seems a bit…incompetent in some respects. Yes, he’s been running this cattle farm for over a decade, but when it comes to other stuff he sure knows how to make it harder for himself. The main thing that frustrated me was Wilde. Within the first few days of him being there, he ends up almost killing Stan’s friend via a punch to the head. He gets knocked out, Stan has to stitch back together his head and call a helicopter in. They were both drunk and if it were the only time this happened I would excuse it to some degree, but Stan decides to not fire Wilde and gives him a second chance. This leads to Wilde getting into more brawls and Stan’s arm getting broken from a supposed lead pipe (which Wilde denies even though a qualified doctor says otherwise, so he is actively lying).

That’s about it. I’ve probably forgotten some chunks of it but that’s more telling of how sluggish it was than me not paying attention.

Rating: 1/10